The Only One Who Thinks It's Tragic
by flowermasters
Summary: And now it is her turn for revenge. -First Class oneshot, Erik/Emma, Erik/Charles, Emma/Sebastian.


**A/N: Okay. Um. I don't really know how this happened . . . **

**Warnings: insane!Emma, language, ANGST, blood/violence/murder, revenge, sadism, implied sex, Emma/Erik, slight Erik/Raven, Erik/Charles, Sebastian/Emma . . . basically a bunch of craziness. Set after First Class, disregards all other X-Men movies/comics. This is very, very odd and strange. Title inspired by a line from 'Real World' by The All-American Rejects.**

**Disclaimer: I totally don't own X-Men . . . **

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><p>Erik Lehnsherr is a very interesting man.<p>

He is almost always collected and cold, yet when someone he cares for is threatened, he is furious and wrathful, an inferno of red fire and molten metal. He is quiet and emotionless, but Emma Frost has seen things in Mystique's head, memories of laughter, fleeting and hard-earned but, in the eyes of the young shape-shifter, worth all the difficulty. And Erik is strong (that is _Magneto_, mutant and leader) but he is also weak, vulnerable, angry (and that is _little Erik Lehnsherr_, small Jewish boy from Dusseldorf).

Emma finds herself studying him at random times, like when she's watching him debate or when they've finished having sex (_having sex_ – because fucking is too coarse a word for her tastes, but what they do is far from making love; Emma Frost has never made love, not really). It is impossible for her to really see his mind (not with that helmet; that ingenuous helmet only leaves his head while he bathes, and Erik is crafty – he takes fast, vigorous showers and thinks of only the most random things in swift, rough German), so she finds herself psychoanalyzing him in a way that she has never had to do with anyone before. He is as much a mystery to her as she is to him, but she is quite a bit more experienced with the ways of minds than Erik is.

So she watches him, her gaze cool and hard. She stares almost-but-not-truly disinterestedly as he re-dresses and moves to leave her and go to either his room or Mystique's (most likely, his own room – Mystique, or Raven as he sometimes still calls her, only holds his interest at certain times of the day), and feels a twinge of sadistic pleasure at the lines of scratches on his already scarred shoulders and back (from her own diamond nails – she wonders without much interest why she is so rough with him, when she was never so violent with Sebastian – and then she realizes that she doesn't care all that much anyway.)

_He only comes to me_, she notes, _because I know his thoughts, even with that ridiculous helmet. There are only three people who have known his mind – one is dead, one is crippled, and the other is me. And I will end up killing him one day._

She accepts that she will kill him just as she accepts that she can sleep with him without caring for him – nothing fazes her, not any more. After the death of the only man who has ever had any measure of control over her, she is free, she is evil, she is hardened and not at all broken. But she also realizes, with a hint of sick amusement, that it may just turn out to be the opposite – Erik Lehnsherr may murder her just as he murdered Sebastian, except she knows that instead of getting a coin through the brain she will be ground to bits, probably with huge, crude metal rods of some sort. How tragic; a beautiful jewel ruined by vulgar industrial steel.

In fact, as time passes, Emma decides it's far more likely that she will be the one to die. She admits this to herself at the breakfast table one morning while Mystique stares with unmasked hatred in her thoughts and Erik obliviously drinks a cup of coffee (black – _disgusting_). But she will take one person with her, at least – Charles Xavier.

_He is the main reason Sebastian is dead_, she reminds herself. _Had he not held him still, Erik would never have been able to succeed in killing him. The pain he must have endured_, she thinks, without any pity. _A coin through the head – even felt vicariously, it would be agonizing._

Still, what better way to destroy Erik than to kill the man he loves, just as he killed the man she (_almost_) loved?

She reflects on this matter one night when they are in bed – he is above her, moving, and she moves back, if only physically. Both of their minds are miles and miles away – he is with Charles Xavier in New York, and she is with Sebastian in Hell.

_I will kill him_. _Charles Xavier will die, and so will I, because even if I hide for forever, he will find me. Erik will find me._

They finish without much fanfare, and he rises, dressing in silence as she watches him from the bed, unashamedly nude and glorious.

"Magneto," she says, her voice cool and smooth.

He looks at her, raising an eyebrow with a hint of surprise – they never, ever talk in her room. "Yes."

She raises her chin just slightly, knowing that it will make her look both very cruel and very pretty at the same time. "Does he know?"

"Does who know what," he questions dully, buckling his belt and already quite tired of the games Emma so delights in playing (_I am the cat and you are the mouse, Magneto – don't deny it; you are a mighty mouse but I am far too sly_).

"Does the telepath know that you love him." She smiles almost seductively at him – _don't lie to me, I don't need to read your mind to know everything about you._

Erik's eyes widen ever so slightly and glint sharply in the dimly lit room, and her smile doesn't slip in the slightest as a chill runs over her flesh.

But he surprises her. "You tell me," he says roughly, pulling on his shirt. "You're a telepath, too, aren't you?"

She does not answer him, and instead gazes at him coolly as he leaves the room, knowing he both wants her and hates her in that instant, but knowing that for now she is safe. For now, he cannot afford to lose her.

So she waits and waits – she waits days, weeks, months, years. Erik sleeps with her and sleeps with Raven and loves Charles, and Emma sleeps with Erik and hates Erik and loves no one. And she never does as he suggested – she never goes into Charles's head to find out if he does know that Erik loves him. If she kills him, she wants to truly kill him, not deliver him from the agony of forbidden love.

She knows the exact day when it arrives. Raven is again thinking hard at the breakfast table, but it is not of her jealous hatred for Emma now; she is thinking of her brother and her lover, and of Erik's nightmares (and Emma sees it in the naked girl's mind, sees Erik breathing out in the throes of a dream – "Charles, Charles, please –," – and she sees how it kills the girl, how the girl aches and _aches_ . . .)

Emma makes up her mind, takes a final sip of water, and waits for Azazel to appear.

She does not tell the red-skinned teleporter why she wants to be taken to the middle of a forest in New York in the dead of night – she only commands him not to tell Magneto or Mystique where she has gone, and he nods, muttering confusedly in Russian (it's his only defense against her, because Azazel of all people knows that she can hear everything he's thinking).

They appear in the woods with a poof of blackish-red smoke, and Azazel turns to her.

"Do you –," he begins.

"No," she cuts him off, not allowing him to even finish his thought. "Go now, and thank you; you won't be seeing me again unless I'm dead."

Azazel stares at her. "What –,"

"Go," she says icily. "I've thanked you, now leave, if you please."

Azazel disappears with a swish of his satanic tail, and Emma is alone, as always. She smiles darkly, turns, and begins to walk.

It takes her an hour to reach Charles Xavier's large mansion, her only guide the thrum of mutant minds in the distance. The closer she draws, however, the less she focuses on reading minds and the more she works to shield herself – it makes her as blind as a bat in terms of knowing whether anyone is nearby, but it also makes her completely invisible to anyone who could possibly pick up her mind.

It's almost ridiculously easy to get in – the doors are all locked, as she expected, but a window on the first floor is unlatched, so she climbs in with ease, nothing but a blonde, lovely shadow in the night. She finds herself in a library – a library filled with shelf after shelf of books, thick tomes and thin novellas, some with faded bindings and others with rich leather covers. She pays very little attention to any of it and breezes out of the room, down a hallway, and up a staircase.

She passes each room quietly, flicking her mind out very briefly just to get an idea of who sleeps behind the doors. All children, all mutants, and none of them worth her time.

She finds his room at the very end of the hallway. She can tell by the feeling of his mind that he is deeply asleep, but she cannot enter his head without exposing herself. So, shielding herself so strongly that she almost becomes lightheaded, she pushes open his unlocked bedroom door and steps in, closing the door behind her with a quiet click.

He is lying on a large bed in the center of the room, white sheets pulled up to his shoulders. There is a wheelchair sitting at the ready by the bed, and she smiles yet again, pleased. Perfect, just perfect; he cannot hope to escape her, just as Sebastian could not have hoped to escape Erik.

She walks silently to the edge of his bed, withdrawing a knife from the sheath at her waist. _Silly Erik_, she thinks with twisted joy; _you had no idea one of your own knives would be used to kill him, did you._

Charles jolts awake at the sound of her thoughts so close to him, and stares up at Emma with confused, sleepy eyes. _What – _he begins, but she doesn't allow him the pleasure of finishing.

She shoves the knife into his chest with sick ease, turning her hand to diamond to provide extra strength. She specifically avoids his heart, wanting to prolong it. He gasps, and for a moment she wonders if he will scream, but he doesn't.

_He sent you to kill me_, Charles thinks. _Didn't he._

_No_, she responds, leaving the knife in his chest and listening to his pained, panicked thoughts with glee. _I came by myself._

_Why _is all he manages.

_Because he loves you_, she responds. _And I owe him one._

_Oh_, Charles says back, and his attempt to call out for help with his mind is fleeting and unsuccessful. She grips his mind with her own, not intending to hurt him, just to prevent him from getting her caught. He gasps again, hand blindly attempting to grab the handle of the knife, but she doesn't let him.

_Die, Charles Xavier_, she tells him, and he does, going slack on the bed with a final, shuddering breath, blood seeping across his pale blue shirt, onto the expensive sheets, and onto Emma's cold, hard hand.

She releases the knife and eyes her sparkling hand, staring at the ruby red blood staining the tips of her fingers. For once, she is not quite sure what to think or feel – should she be happy that she has killed him? Delighted that she has hurt Erik in the best way she can? Terrified of her own insanity?

But she feels nothing, and she wipes her fingers on the sheets before reaching out with her mind, pinpointing Mystique even at this great distance.

She projects an image of her diamond hand clutching a bloody knife. _Your brother is dead. You're welcome._

_What – _comes the startled response, but Emma terminates the mental connection before Raven has time to think anything else. _You're welcome_, she thinks again, this time to no one in particular. _Now Erik is all yours; because the one he truly loves is dead and I have killed him._

With that, Emma gives a final smile that is far too cracked and far too broken, and then leaves – she leaves to hide and wait to be found.

It takes years, but it happens. He finds her, just as she always knew he would.

She has been living in Sweden, only halfheartedly attempting to hide (but she is blonde and blue-eyed, so it isn't at all difficult to stay inconspicuous), and when he tracks her down, there are silver strands interspersed with blonde and lines on her face that she'd hoped would never appear. But his hair has gone completely gray, so she feels just a little superior, even as she is being killed.

Erik makes it relatively quick, as she'd thought he would – his anger is still burning white-hot, and he cannot control himself as he wraps the beam around her diamond waist.

She smiles just before he begins to squeeze. "Oh, Erik," she says coolly. "He knew. I told him as he bled."

Erik lets out a single enraged roar and the metal around her constricts, cracking her in half like a twig. Her last sight is of him standing over her, tragically handsome and terribly, wonderfully monstrous as he watches her die.

_Well, that's that, Sebastian_, Emma Frost thinks as she prepares to join her lover in Hell. _You created the monster, but me? _

_I finished him._

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><p><strong>AN: . . . I don't know how to explain that. Lmfao. (For anyone who's keeping track, this is the fourth time Charles has died in one of my fics. AH.) Thank you for reading, please review.**


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